Whenever I read a thread which begins with the phrase “what do you think of…”, i.e. “what do you think of honour killing”, "what do you think of jahez’', “what do you think of falaan dhimkaan”…I feel so tempted to say something like “I highly approve” of it. Don’t know why:hehe:
Anyway, honour killing is a horrendous crime against humanity. Unfortunately, women are mostly the weaker and most suppressed segement of society..hence they are victims of it more frequently then men.
Interestingly enough, most of the honour killings aren’t even done for the sake of honour.Honour is merely used as an excuse. A couple of years ago, I helped translate this book dealing with feminist issues and there was a very detailed study of karokari. Apparently, men use honour killing as an excuse to: get rid of a wife,or any ‘undesirable’ female family member. To settle scores with their rivals…i.e. they claim that so and so is having an affair with this member of my family, so that they have an excuse to kill him. Poor women are merely scapegoats. Then there were cases where some men accused men of defiling their honour,killed their own women and claimed some sort of ransom for it.
AND there were cases where women were accused of zina so that they could be killed, and men could usurp their land or property. So, you see that ‘hounour’ is a convenient scapegoat.
Of course, there were cases where people were driven by a ‘genuine’ belief that their honour was at stake. Sadly enough, even if a women gets raped or assaulted, it is she who has to suffer the consequence, whether she is guilty or not.
I remember when we were holding a workshop in the inner city(androon Lahore), and the ladies there told me of a very very sad incident. There was a four or five years old young girl who had been molested by some sicko,and her own parent’s tried to kill her…first by hitting her on head with a brick.And then by trying to get a doctor to give her some poisonous injection!I felt sick for many days. How can parents do this to their own child. But people do this a lot of the time. We have a very funny notion of honour culturally speaking. That might be because we equate virginity with piety. i.e. a woman who has been raped is ‘tainted’, and is not good because she is no longer ‘pure’. Never mind the fact that it was not her fault.
There should be stricter punishment for people who commit this kind of heinous acts.